The sepia toning lends itself quite beautifully to the 'loneliness' of the tree. Very awesome!

Marvelous shot, like it GL

The dark & light....intense contrast of colors..absolutely stunning.

So alone, great capture... GL

Tks Mod!

I like that everything in the picture is so round and looking really soft. Awesome photo

this is amazing!!!

Congratulations on 1st place, Certainly the most professional photograph.

captivating face , expression, lighting,. perfect cropping. its perfect. good luck , I hope you do well. !

Sounds interesting, nice photo . Good luck!

The goals states "shots taken at the beach. It could be a landscape of a lonely stretch of empty beach, a close up of the sand or a shot of a busy one that is jam packed with people." This doesn't stated that the sand must be the focus.... it mandates what kind of "scene" it must be. This means that SAND must be visible and it be a sandy beach.

In my poor opinion, the sky is taking the eyes completely and not the sand, it's a FANTASTIC photo... but for sand theme I (my opinion) crop a little bit the sky!

Lovely.

Lighting looks a little odd around the hair, horizon and trees. Extreme high contrast in processing? Quite effective mood for a book cover.

This is a perfect book cover

very nice

Very nice shot and lighting

Congratulations on 1st place, wonderful entry.

Fantastic. Definitely the best entry by far. Well done in advance

This is just amazing...i know who is the winner now

COngrats author , it's a great job! GL

One big wow! What can I say. It's stunning. Great shot! ; )

Nice work

Really cool, clean photo. Good luck author.

Nice High Key

Wow!

I agree, like it very much, good work!

Congratulations on 1st place, love this photo, would make a great poster.

Damn MnM said what I wanted to say...

I love this one! The colors and depth are so nice.

good concept!

lovely colors

that's better

Lovely summer photo. love the colours and tones.

well done,perhaps a little dark.

Nice, but you can hardly tell the source of light

perhaps the picture is not technical, but very charming, bravo

Nice use of DOF. I do like the flower being de-centered, but agree with Artifakts that it's a little too far over

A little too much lens flare, it takes away from the deepness of the picture... nice shot none-the-less

Nice but might have been better if the flower wasn't so close to the edge.

Beautiful

The post editing and dof is good, but the composition need some work. There is too much dead space to the left, and it's hard to tell at first what the focus of the photo is. You might want to crop the photo a bit so the orchid is more prominent

Beautiful

lovely

Sweet with a quality

would have voted higher if we had a High res.

Catch the moment! Lovely!

GL!

Good, clean focus. GL!

VERY COOL!